


more than ever this was the end.

by andsheran



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: After saving the world, Character Death, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, In a way, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad, She Deserved Better, anyway, he's not good for alina like????, i dont like him, i never even liked the gisha trilogy that much, idk how but i wrote this in practically one sitting, its just sad rly, my problem is mostly with mal, not saying the darkling is... cuz he's kinda problematic but, she deserved better than mal, uhhhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:28:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27354979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andsheran/pseuds/andsheran
Summary: Alina has been holding on, but now she lets go.
Relationships: Mal Oretsev/Alina Starkov, The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova/Alina Starkov
Kudos: 28





	more than ever this was the end.

**Author's Note:**

> sooooo  
> idk what came upon me to write this. the grisha trilogy isnt even my favourite (six of crows duology SUPREMACY) BUTI BLAME NOT LOVING IT ON MAL TBH. he's just :meh: annoying?, he thinks he knows best and he doesnt rly, he's a fuking whiny asshole.... im done with him rly. 
> 
> IM NOT SAYING ALEKSANDER IS BETTER cuz we all know he's also kinda problematic but at least he and alina had smtg in common, their powers and the fact that they were like two half's of one single thing... they would've been good to each other, if well. he wasnt so ... evil? lksajlKLASJDLKAJSDKLAJSDL anyway 
> 
> uhm sorry if this is sad, or isnt sad enough. i just had to get it out with and call it a day so here it iss.

Alina suffered in her life. She wasn’t old enough to start retelling her life as if it hadn’t happened a few years past and instead decades ago. No, she wasn’t that old, not long had passed, the memories were still fresh and the nightmares vivid, every couple week she would wake up alone, sweat dripping into her sheets, her mind restless. 

She kept going back to the same places, the same emotions. She remembers the underground, she remembers when Mal abandoned her, she remembers when her power left her, when her life got sucked out of her, the one part she loved, died. All for the greater good, for the lives of thousands, she understands what happened, she knows it was the only choice they had. She lost part of herself so that an entire generation could stay alive, live in freedom, unafraid, peacefully. She did that and she’s happy she did it, she’s grateful for everything but the hole in her didn’t stay the same, with each nightmare, each day, each second it grows, and it’s eating the rest that’s left of her. She’s dying because the light was feeding her body, and now that there’s no light, it’s eating itself away to survive.

Mal is a great guy, he’s her best friend, the man she swore to love, but they were both scarred by the war, a lot happened and not all can be forgiven. Even if one says so.

Alina pushes herself away from the soaked sheets, the air freezing on her back as she sits there. She’s broken, she’s dead but so is Mal. He’s not physically dying like her, but Alina knows the man she once loved is not there, he is changed, and she doesn’t recognize him anymore. Every time a nightmare haunts her, and she wakes up, he’s not there. He runs away, either disgusted or afraid, she doesn’t know but when she feels like this, it sucks to be alone. She wishes for those first nights where he would stay and comfort her. Took him little to no time to start ignoring these moments, leaving her to wake up alone while he was off in some other part of the orphanage, ignoring their messed-up lives. 

Lies. Their life together soon became nothing but a bunch of lies.

Alina grunted in pain as she got up, her back hurt. She’s only twenty-six and age is getting to her. Especially when she’s being eaten away from the inside.

She made her way toward the adjacent bathroom, even in the darkness she knew were to go. One would say its because its her bedroom, its familiar, but Alina can walk through the entire house without ever turning the lights on, even when there is no moon and the darkness is thick. She lost her light, but sometimes it feels, to her, that Aleksander’s darkness has never left her.

They’re the same, they’ve always been. Opposites, light and dark, yin and yang, the Kosmos and the Kaos. They were the beginning and the end, but Alina was blind then, all she saw was Mal, her best friend, the one she loved.

Lov _ed._

 _Was it love? Was it ever real_?

It’s doesn’t do her good to think back on this because she knows where she’ll end. Inside the bathtub, water that once was scalding now cold, she sits there looking at the other end of the porcelain, legs pulled to her chest, face down with her hair falling in wet chunks around her. She doesn’t cry, but she regrets a lot.

Ever since he died, Alina tried to forget his name, she ignored the letters that would always form in her brain when her thoughts turned dark. Those letters that she could never forget. She knows them so well, she has whispered them many times before, but never after he died.

Never.

She can’t give in to the feeling of loneliness and desperation, but she doesn’t want to die either. _Don’t I?_ It’s so difficult to hold on, each day it becomes less bearable, Alina can’t do it anymore. She wants his comfort, his darkness to her light. Even if there is no light in her, she wants the feeling to come back, she misses it so much, all she knows is that never has she ever felt that way, for anyone. Not even Mal.

She stands there in the middle of the bathroom, holding on. It’s all she can do, but even that won’t be for long. Years, she’s been dying for years, no one noticed, no one tries to help her, they don’t even know she’s dying. The only way for her to stay alive would be if she could have her light back, her other half, the half that is and has always been sizzling with life, boiling and spilling all over with life and will and everything she had.

She has nothing now; she stands naked in a world that can’t keep her alive. In a world she doesn’t belong in.

Looking back on everything, it begins to feel like she was never meant to be here and if she were meant to be in this world it would be with her equal, the one name she can’t forget but can’t pronounce. She finally musters the courage to open the faucet in the bathtub, the water is hot, and she tells herself it will only be for a while.

She begins to take off her soaked pyjamas, taking her time as she lets the bathtub fill, dragging it for as long as she can. Holding on.

Alina takes all her strength and gets in the tub, the water is scalding, her skin is turning red and yet she feels nothing, her eyes have never looked so unbothered. She goes under the water, eyes closed and holds on for as long as she can, she comes up breathing in sporadic breaths. All her strength, it’s gone.

The water turns cold and she’s crying without even knowing. Life really fucked her over, gave her a power so great it had to be destroyed and then when it was gone, she would be too. And it was gone.

And so was she.

Hours passed, the little window announced dawn and yet, Alina Starkov lay there, frozen. She didn’t have the strength. She couldn’t take it no more, it physically hurt. She looked over at the sky, where the light of the day was coming up, she smiled with her last strength, she loved the light and the warm of the daylight and it felt wrong to ruin the moment but holding on was getting too difficult. She could feel everything inside her body, the microscopic tears in her muscle tissue, the stinging that was getting more and more frequent, everything and at the same time she felt nothing, she couldn’t feel the heat, she knew it was too hot, she could see the steam but she barely felt it. The water had never been scalding. It had been cold all along.

That’s why this time it wasn’t like the others, more than ever this was the end.

It was her time to decide when to go by her own terms, she didn’t have to save the world, her job was done and she was nothing now, she was nothing for a long time, she stopped being something when she lost her light, but now even the darkness she always felt was fading for good and Alina can’t have that. She can’t live without the feeling, without power. No _body_ can.

She gives the dawn her last tears and then she says the name she’s been wanting to say for so long, the name on the tip of her tongue at all times, a name she’s missed, her opposite, her equal, the balance she never had and understood too late.

“Aleksander…” comes out in a whisper, the word dying on her lips as the last bits of Darkness engulf her and she disappears, body turning to ash. She burned her soul with the last pieces of darkness and the little bit of light she borrowed from dawn.


End file.
